Senate Minority Leader-elect Chuck Schumer, of New York, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in his office on Capitol Hill, Friday, Nov. 18, 2016 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Chuck Schumer: Making Government Shutdowns Great Again

With the election of Donald Trump, it was a metaphysical certitude that a few dramatic changes were about to take place in pop culture courtesy of the Democrat/Media Complex.

Limiting executive power was bound to be hip again, even after eight years of applauding “I have a pen and a phone,” and “If Congress won’t act, I will” presidential overreach.

Along those lines, political dissent which had been the “highest form of patriotism” during the Bush years, only to magically transform into “racism and bigotry” throughout the reign of Obama, was guaranteed to ricochet back into the realm of principled statesmanship again.

The same folks that had decried the caustic voices of men dressed up like Paul Revere at their Tea Parties would be triumphantly cheering the noble “resistance” of women dressed up like lady parts at their Women’s March in DC.

And speaking of DC, there’s one more thing that Trump has made cool again: legislative gridlock. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the same man who voted to authorize President Bush to create a physical wall along the southern border of the United States in 2006, has now issued this stern warning to Republicans on Capitol Hill:

“If Republicans insist on inserting poison pill riders such as defunding Planned Parenthood, building a border wall, or starting a deportation force, they will be shutting down the government and delivering a severe blow to our economy.”

If you’re feeling a sense of whiplash right now, that’s because you’re remembering just four years ago when that same Chuck Schumer applauded the use of poison pills in large appropriations bills. At that time, Democrats were desperately trying to keep their members that were in electoral jeopardy from having to take a separate vote on funding the massively unpopular Obamacare law. So, they tucked that spending into a large appropriations bill.

Senator Ted Cruz called them out and proceeded to threaten a government shutdown if the Democrats didn’t withdraw their Obamacare poison pill. Chuck Schumer found that to be most displeasing. He accused Cruz of trying to, “hold the American people hostage until everyone agrees with his view.” Schumer wailed,

“He wants to hold the cancer patient hostage who won’t get treatments if the government shuts down. He wants to throw the construction worker out of work who is doing a job that is federally funded and won’t be funded if the government shuts down. He wants to tell the recipients of Social Security that they may not get their checks if there aren’t enough people at the centers to send those checks and make sure they get to the right place, because he wants to shut the government down.”

Can someone please get ahold of those cancer patients, construction workers, and Social Security recipients to let them know they’ve got a new enemy in town? Chuck Schumer’s making shutdowns great again.